Shards of a Broken Sun [Megaten/Shugo Chara/Exalted]

[quantum lurker]

If we assume reading body language requires higher level Investigation (or the Interview specialization), it might actually be less abusable at lower levels for the purposes of manipulating people than Socialize.

Click to shrink...

Yep, though that also makes it useless for what we want Socialise 1 for (a vote for eventual Investigation 2 passing seems unlikely at the moment).

What I was thinking of was more blackmail or softer variations thereof as far as abusability goes (should be feasible for Investigation 1 vs careless individuals?)

It could, of course, be abusable in a different way, like finding out where someone keeps their drugs like Midori did. And then taking them.

Click to shrink...

Yep. Socialise 1 doubtlessly has the equivalent capacity, although through more layers of indirection than Investigation which may make it less likely to happen?

 

[PistachioCookies]

What I was thinking of was more blackmail or softer variations thereof as far as abusability goes (should be feasible for Investigation 1 vs careless individuals?)

Click to shrink...

Funnily enough, blackmail comes under Socialize in the rulebook. So both abilities would probably be needed to do that. Investigate or Larceny to find the evidence, Socialize to send the threat.

You only start being able to blackmail without having the evidence at Socialize 3.

.....I hope we get at least 7 XP by the end of this little trip. If we don't spend our current 2 XP on any emergency boost, we'll have 9 XP.

That would be enough to buy Midori's Geek-To-Sleek-In-2-Hours Family Fun Time training package for all 3 of the Hinamori kids, ontop of starting training for Telekinesis 4 to hit the roadblock event. Though hopefully it will only trigger after all the stuff we started training last round comes through, I think there was a mention of it forcing Amu to lose time.

 

[veekie]

On Socialize, a complete Social interaction not bypassed by players being able to process basic social interaction cues to bypass the roll would be like.
Amu talking with mom
-Look at each other

--Mom assesses Amu's appearance and posture. Amu attempts to say she's fine. Perception + Socialize vs Manipulation + Socialize, determining her mood, feelings about things present in that scene, and whether anything notable happened lately, while Amu with no socialize skills, is visibly agitated, restless and avoiding her gaze.
---With basic adult competence vs Amu being really bad at hiding anything, she succeeds, determining that Amu is very stressed and upset about something she's trying to hide.

--Amu assesses Mom's appearance and posture. Mom masks her personal concerns to avoid burdening Amu with adult concerns that she can't affect anyway. Amu cheats with Empathy.
---Amu can't get past the facade conventionally, but Empathy informs her mom is genuinely concerned for her...but without Empathy she wouldn't be able tell, and may just write it off as her mother being nosy.

THEN they move on to the Presence vs Integrity phases.
But the strategy there is determined by what you mutually read here, because once Mom determined that Amu was upset, the conversation was about finding out what made her upset and then addressing it, while on Amu's side if not for her empathy cheating a success in here, she would be guessing rather than knowing that her mom is trying to help both Amu and her friends, which is likely to lead to worse assumptions whether its motivated by keeping Amu out of trouble or some other objective.

Socialize is Manners, because its about keeping your irrelvant emotions and concerns under wraps when its not relevant to the other person. Courtesy is masking that you don't care about their topic of passion(difficulty 1-ish, they can tell if they try, but being polite means making that basic effort), being rude is not even trying to pretend you don't care(Socialize 0), and being manipulative is pretending you are passionate about it for the purpose of better yanking their chain.

Socialize is Tact, because it lets you notice when your chosen topic of conversation is inappropriate because they have a personal negative response or just aren't in the mood for this particular conversation. Being tactful is noticing when someone is visibly showing an emotional state(difficulty 1, even if they aren't concealing), being tactless is straight up not noticing obvious social cues(like someone being motivated by friendship and then you try to pay them to do something), and being insightful is having a better read than what is being superficially presented.

Socialize is about understanding other peoples' relationship with each other, and group alignments.
Which is why a stereotypical creepy otaku has Socialize 0, because they ignore all social cues whatsoever and just double down on Integrity.

Its a skill. Its all in how you use it.
But having zero just means you're tactless and blunt like a child would be.

 

[PistachioCookies]

Socialize is about understanding other peoples' relationship with each other, and group alignments.

Click to shrink...

.....And then you take a look at the possible use cases for this information, once you have sniffed it all out.

My take on it is:

All the nice ways of using this kind of information tend to be low-impact, relatively speaking.

The ones that have immediate, high-impact effect all tend to be the not-so-nice ways of using it.

Even just taking Midori's use of her own Socialize against Amu as an example - upon reading that her own daughter was having an extremely negative personal response to her line of questioning, she decided the optimal course of action to take advantage of it was to metaphorically seize upon it with both hands, drill down and interrogate hard.

You can use nicer words if you like, but "nosy" is a fair enough term to describe her behavior. Even if it was done out of genuine concern for her daughter, that doesn't stop it from still being prying. It might not be considered tactless by the above description, but that doesn't stop it from being somewhat questionable. She broke down her daughter by pressing, we could literally have voted for Amu to have nervous breakdown during that segment.

Could Midori have taken an alternative approach during that segment?

Well yes, since the result we were hoping for at the time with the previous vote was that Midori might find out Amu was hiding something, but still choose not to crack her like an egg and just let know she knew, but allow her to do what she wanted anyway and reaffirm her trust in Amu's own judgment.

That would've been the nice thing for her to do.

But if the positions were reversed - if it were Amu presented with a chance to do an interrogation and Midori was on the hook - how many people here would seriously consider voting to just let Midori go as opposed to go full Charisma + Socialize and wring her for all she's worth?

I couldn't even really fault anyone who wanted to take advantage of the Socialize interrogation - there's no utility in doing the nice thing.

 

[quantum lurker]

All the nice ways of using this kind of information tend to be low-impact, relatively speaking.

The ones that have immediate, high-impact effect all tend to be the not-so-nice ways of using it.

Click to shrink...

Well, yes, but this sort of stuff adds up over time to higher-impact outcomes and can narratively serve as the make-or-break point for high tension interactions (imagine if Amu had a low opinion of her parents because they had Socialise 0 and didn't know how to interact well with their daughter, that would have gone amazingly badly)?
(The second half, while being true, is also practically baked into the definition?)

She broke down her daughter by pressing, we could literally have voted for Amu to have nervous breakdown during that segment.

Click to shrink...

Well, considering the whole Miki incident not doing so probably makes no sense from the perspective of a responsible parent? Having a parent that's ignorant of such matters instead probably isn't much better, all things considered.
(As we well know, if Miki hadn't done her thing we would have gone off just fine, but she did and here we are now)

I couldn't even really fault anyone who wanted to take advantage of the Socialize interrogation - there's no utility in doing the nice thing.

Click to shrink...

Context matters, and Socialise at least tells you when you seem to be prying instead of doing so by accident - up to you whether you want to ignore it or not? (And of course, sometimes there is no number of mundane Socialise dice that can blunt the effect of prying beyond a certain minimum)
Flipping this around, if you don't want this sort of thing to be applied too easily* to Amu, you need Socialise anyway for defense?

* I think this sort of thing only worked because Midori was her mom, and they really love each other

 

[PistachioCookies]

Well, considering the whole Miki incident not doing so probably makes no sense from the perspective of a responsible parent? Having a parent that's ignorant of such matters instead probably isn't much better, all things considered.
(As we well know, if Miki hadn't done her thing we would have gone off just fine, but she did and here we are now)

Click to shrink...

Oh, I didn't say it made no sense. It made perfect sense, from Midori's perspective. From her judgment, it was the right thing to do and I wouldn't even disagree.

It just wasn't a nice usage of it and wasn't meant to be. She wanted to extract information at that point, not be nice.

So we got to read a segment about a woman doing a not-so-pleasant thing, for what she hoped was the greater good.

Context matters, and Socialise at least tells you when you seem to be prying instead of doing so by accident - up to you whether you want to ignore it or not? (And of course, sometimes there is no number of mundane Socialise dice that can blunt the effect of prying beyond a certain minimum)

Click to shrink...

Yeah, it is up to us voters, but when the more benign and nice ways of using info gleaned off reading people simply aren't as impactful as the less pleasant ways, well.

As I said, how many people do you expect would vote to back off from going all-in on the interrogation?

It's easily justified at that point as being for the greater good.

 

[veekie]

For one its cheaper to use psychic powers to the same effect for abuses. Basic competence is cheaper for avoiding abuse

 

[PistachioCookies]

For one its cheaper to use psychic powers to the same effect for abuses. Basic competence is cheaper for avoiding abuse

Click to shrink...

This is true.

And I don't disagree there are definitely clear benefits to having Socialize, that don't involve abusing it. I'm actually perfectly fine with taking up Midori's training offer to level 1, maybe even 2, especially for Ami.

But when you give someone a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail and high-level Socialize is a really, really big hammer.

So is Psionics-based UMI, but the difference is, unlike Mind Control, Socialize doesn't look like a hammer on the outside.

And when that's the case, it is very easy to pretend that you're not just whacking nails with it when you swing it at someone.

 

[quantum lurker]

As I said, how many people do you expect would vote to back off from going all-in on the interrogation?

It's easily justified at that point as being for the greater good.

Click to shrink...

In a vacuum, yeah, I do think pushing would be the response fairly often (if only because of the nature of Quests and Protagonism meaning Do Nothing (Supportively) or Wait And Hope It Reolves Itself is rarely a valid option).
(Not that there isn't degrees to pushing, mind - the WP litmus test strikes again)

But this skews more towards an unanswerable question in practice, because framing of internal narration filtered through personality can significantly affect the questor takeaways from the same event, and thus their ultimate votes?

(Well, you could also easily argue that the nice ways of using gleaned info happen all the time, it's just not noticeable because low impact as you mentioned)

Socialize doesn't look like a hammer on the outside.

And when that's the case, it is very easy to pretend that you're not just whacking nails with it when you swing it at someone.

Click to shrink...

That's very fair, and I guess we have brought the Socialise discussion to a conclusion then?
(High dot Socialise still can be used at being really good at mixers or forming connections, but given questor tendencies and the nature of our current scenario, in a vacuum I currently also doubt that's all high dot Socialise will end up being used for)

 

[veekie]

It'd cost too much past the third dot. Nevermind the xp, the time is a problem and you can't train socialize by yourself

 

[Baughn]

It'd cost too much past the third dot. Nevermind the xp, the time is a problem and you can't train socialize by yourself

Click to shrink...

Moreover, you can't train anything without using it. For high level socialise, that means… high level socialise effects, and you don't get to train just some of them.

If you did, that would be called a specialty.

To be clear, most people with socialise 4/5 are politicians, dictators, demagogues or cult leaders. Being at zero is looked down on, but there absolutely is a level that is too much—and there absolutely are people who would look at that and wonder what sort of person needs it.

There are good use cases, but nation-building first requires anarchy to build out of, otherwise you're breaking something first.

 

[veekie]

So essentially there isn't any way to slipper slope ourselves there until long after we got there using psychic powers already

 

[quantum lurker]

Moreover, you can't train anything without using it.

Click to shrink...

This is hilariously obvious in hindsight, but before this post I was under the impression that training was just "insert XP, lots of time, and vaguely relevant Stunt => magic => output of new dot after a while"

 

[PistachioCookies]

(Well, you could also easily argue that the nice ways of using gleaned info happen all the time, it's just not noticeable because low impact as you mentioned)

Click to shrink...

We actually saw one nice way of using this kind of info, which was right at the beginning with Amu befriending Kana after having read it off her brain with psionics and commiserating with her. Acquiring that information wasn't something chosen by voters, it just happened as part of the story. That meant there were no ulterior motives involved, Amu just wanted to be Kana's friend and kept everything a secret - at least until her mother forced it out of her.

Deliberately voting to acquire information like that with anyone else would have been difficult, because that would have meant deliberately using Mind Control. In fact, the option was considered unpalatable during the Saaya event and it wasn't even deliberately voted for - it was just how the last resort subvote of "mental attack" turned out to be interpreted during that chapter. ....OTOH I suspect doing the same thing with Socialize comes with a lot less inhibitions.

So essentially there isn't any way to slipper slope ourselves there until long after we got there using psychic powers already

Click to shrink...

Isn't there?

Media professionals like Amu's mother have a high level in Socialize on their own.

And Amu currently has a problem with the mass media. Plenty of people in those companies to practice Rank 3 Socialize skills on. Would seem like a convenient solution on the surface.

 

[Baughn]

For Nocturne/DeSu2 veterans, what does this mean in practice OOC?

Click to shrink...

There's no hard evidence that they're connected; but at the start of Nocturne, prior to the Conception, you walk past the (closed by men in black) Yoyogi Park -- which is where Hikawa's final pre-Conception demon attack took place, and where he disabled some sort of 'radio tower'.

In Devil Survivors 2 you see the same style of tower in multiple locations, where they're used to counteract Polaris' erosion of the world, and it's mentioned there are multiple smaller/satellite towers besides the three major ones. Yoyogi doesn't come up, but it's well inside the protected range in Tokyo.

Considering that Yoyogi is close to the hospital where Conception actually starts, and said hospital would have been within range to be affected by said 'radio tower' if it were still operational, in the previous version of this quest I decided it's likely that said tower was doing the same thing as Fumi's towers; and that the clash between the Cult of Gaea and <unnamed government forces> in Nocturne might well have been between Hikawa and JPs, though possibly by proxy.

Sadly then, in the Nocturne timeline, they didn't catch on that the hospital in question was suspicious and needed to be investigated.

In the DeSu2 timeline, Hikawa's attack either fails or else doesn't happen at all.

Note that these games are both time loops. The 'true ending' of Nocturne is "Kagutsuchi is destroyed", but that breaks every world and initiates a multiversal apocalypse; it's implied that it only happened after a large number of retries. The more probable ending is the 'neutral' one, where the demi-fiend is human enough to recreate the world as it was, but- without Hikawa's plot, presumably. The demi-fiend appears to go back to human in this case, and there's no indication he keeps his memories. It's in breach of what Kagutsuchi is trying to achieve, and it does so under protest; it's unlikely to do him any favours he didn't ask for.

Meanwhile, the True Ending of DeSu2 is simply "time resets, but without the conditions that caused DeSu2" -- although in its case it's more likely that Hibiki keeps his memories, since Polaris' whole thing is more or less a test; it's just looking for someone who can overcome it, it's not entirely clear why, and it doesn't seem to particularly care what sort of world the victor then asks for.

These rhyme: The world gets recreated in both cases, to the specifications of the one who wins against the ultimate mastermind of the respective scenarios. It's also worth noting, however, that--despite Polaris being on the surface far more alien than Kagutsuchi--Kagutsuchi was looking for a complete reset, a Reason that recreates humanity in fundamentally different conditions, whereas all of Polaris' accepted "Reasons" are basically variations on the level of "Let's try communism instead of capitalism", say.

---

The conclusion, I think, is obvious enough. I'm still not going to draw it for you.

 

[PistachioCookies]

Although, we might not even be far enough along the timeline for any of the broadcast towers to have been set up yet.

No, Amu hasn't picked up anything from Tokyo Tower, but I don't know that she would have.

Click to shrink...

Tokyo Tower was the main one, Yoyogi's wouldn't have been set up before it was done. That quote isn't precisely confirmation of it being unfinished, but given that Hotsuin had to show up in-person to use the Dragon Stream to close the rift at Seiyo, I feel odds are better than not the Tokyo one isn't up and running yet.

Or if it was, it was attacked by Hikawa already and taken offline by him.

If Amu sees any towers around and feels the Dragon Stream running through them, it might be possible to stake one out or something and hope to intercept Hikawa there, but otherwise his movements are still unknown. Probably even to JP's, or they would have brought the hammer down already.

 

[Yu Narukaze]

Note that these games are both time loops. The 'true ending' of Nocturne is "Kagutsuchi is destroyed", but that breaks every world and initiates a multiversal apocalypse; it's implied that it only happened after a large number of retries. The more probable ending is the 'neutral' one, where the demi-fiend is human enough to recreate the world as it was, but- without Hikawa's plot, presumably. The demi-fiend appears to go back to human in this case, and there's no indication he keeps his memories. It's in breach of what Kagutsuchi is trying to achieve, and it does so under protest; it's unlikely to do him any favours he didn't ask for.

Click to shrink...

Wait, what? I admit I'm not a total expert about Nocturne, but this sounds very very wrong. The True Demon Ending didn't even exist in Nocturne's original release, it got added in the Maniax rerelease, that's just the only one which got released overseas. And there are three or four endings besides the "neutral" one and True Demon, and the idea that the Demi-Fiend would never pick any of those... it sounds off.

This might be a thing for this quest, admittedly, but I'm 99% sure there's no time loop in canon, especially not one which ends with the Demi-Fiend inevitably picking the True Demon Ending.

 

[Baughn]

Wait, what? I admit I'm not a total expert about Nocturne, but this sounds very very wrong. The True Demon Ending didn't even exist in Nocturne's original release, it got added in the Maniax rerelease, that's just the only one which got released overseas. And there are three or four endings besides the "neutral" one and True Demon, and the idea that the Demi-Fiend would never pick any of those... it sounds off.

This might be a thing for this quest, admittedly, but I'm 99% sure there's no time loop in canon, especially not one which ends with the Demi-Fiend inevitably picking the True Demon Ending.

Click to shrink...

Well, it's kind of a "Yes, but also yes" scenario.

There's a lot of worlds. Not all of them would pick the neutral ending, and it's not clear what happens in the other ones, but the others are so weird that it's not clear to me if it's even possible to write a story in that setting. The World of Might, maybe? Though then I have to start asking myself how it would develop over time.

True Demon was added later, yep. It's still considered the 'true ending', as it's the one that later games branch off of -- and it's the only one that isn't a loop in some form.

= = =

I'm not saying the demi-fiend would never pick any of the others, just that those others aren't "neutral". And that the neutral ending is more probable than the true demon one, since... by definition, that one can only happen once; it's the last ending.

That being said - I did specify that this is how I wrote it in the previous iteration of the quest. You shouldn't assume it's precisely true in this one.

 

[PistachioCookies]

This might be a thing for this quest, admittedly, but I'm 99% sure there's no time loop in canon, especially not one which ends with the Demi-Fiend inevitably picking the True Demon Ending.

Click to shrink...

Technically, there is a way for there not to be a time loop in Nocturne, but for there still to be a time loop.... and that's if Nocturne's Neutral ending leads into Devil Survivor 2's Restorer ending, which leads back into Nocturne's Neutral ending and so on.

But (among other things like reconciling the lack of Polaris in one timeline and the lack of Kagutsuchi in another) you'd still have to assume one always led into the other and never into a different ending of the other timeline, which might be a stretch.

 

[veekie]

Isn't there?

Media professionals like Amu's mother have a high level in Socialize on their own.

And Amu currently has a problem with the mass media. Plenty of people in those companies to practice Rank 3 Socialize skills on. Would seem like a convenient solution on the surface.

Click to shrink...

Yes, but keep the skill levels in mind:
0 - Literally a child, speak the first thing that pops into mind, deception attempts are transparent and generally misreads motives, including those that are expressedly stated, unless there is some history to reference.

1 - Teenager, capable of deliberate attempts at obfuscating your true interests and at semi-reliably identifying interests in others where not deliberately obfuscated.

2 - Adult, generally has already developed a reasonably solid facade for the purpose of social interaction. People mainly interact with this facade, this facade is usually just a sanitized version of your true self, and if the facade is too big a deviation from the inner self, strain may occur.

3 - Professional, people will be making deliberate attempts at testing your social skills on a regular basis to get their job done, and you need to be able to consistently succeed, rather than just mostly succeed to keep up.

I don't really see a problem with 3 dot ratings here, because 3 dot(or 2 with a specialty) is basically the social expectation for any kind of publicly notable figure. Getting to 4-5 level would require some kind of situation that actively put her in a position where she has to manage large numbers of people on a regular basis without relying on an institution to do it for her.

The first 2 dot ratings are just there to reliably make Difficulty 1 checks. Because Difficulty 1 checks are "correctly understand what the other person is presenting". Unless you're Tanya Degurechaff or something, you need that to Adult.

The 3rd dot is just getting to the point where picking up motives beyond what is actively presented becomes something that happens frequently, and most of that is just picking up their moods or favor/disfavoring various topics

 

[PistachioCookies]

I don't really see a problem with 3 dot ratings here, because 3 dot(or 2 with a specialty) is basically the social expectation for any kind of publicly notable figure.

Click to shrink...

Let me just point out the kinds of feats that Socialize 3 is meant to allow you to do:

Someone with Socialize 3 can obtain powerful political favors merely by asking the correct people in the right way or successfully blackmail a noble without evidence.

Click to shrink...

I bet that all publicly notable figures would really like to be able to obtain powerful political favors just by asking in the right way.

I sure don't believe it is a social expectation that they would be able to do so.

 

[Baughn]

Yes, but keep the skill levels in mind:

Click to shrink...

I think my take on this agrees, but:

Adults, at least in my reading, hover between 1-2; 1 is "acceptable social skills", 2 is "good social skills", and 2 is enough for any low-level job where social skills matter. 3 dots -- remember, this is what Midori has -- become the norm once social skills are the main focus of your job and you're well into your career; 3 dots is, in general, the normal rating for the top ability of someone competent and experienced at their job. Many would have part of that as 1 or 2 dots of specialties. Humanity being what it is, it isn't unusual for someone well into their career to still have only 2 dots, however; it just means they're bad at their job.

Anything higher makes you truly exceptional. A world leader might have 4 dots in socialize, with a 3-dot specialty in 'politics'; this would be a once-in-a-generation talent, which of course means you already know the names of several.

= = =

It is very much true that socialize just makes you better at pushing your plans through, without making those plans better. You'd need those 6-7 dots to be an effective dictator; but your people will still be starving. Since it's hard to learn multiple abilities to the level of competence, much less the level of a world leader, this means a good world leader has advisors they actually listen to; a bad one fixates on teenager-level ideas and is able to push those through, despite the consequences.

Or you can focus on multiple skills, and if you're talented enough you'll reach full competence in all of them, but then you won't be able to compete with the ones who focused on social manipulation.

This isn't a game any normal person can win. Not even a Solar, who would need to compete with other Solars.

= = =

Tsumugu, by the way, has 5 dots (including specialties) in 'animal photography'.

 

[PistachioCookies]

Tsumugu, by the way, has 5 dots (including specialties) in 'animal photography'.

Click to shrink...

Do we get to know what counts as an animal for its purposes?

 

[Baughn]

Do we get to know what counts as an animal for its purposes?

Click to shrink...

Well, animals. Not humans, which doesn't mean he isn't still fully competent at human-photography. Not demons either; that requires a completely different skillset than what Tsumugu has, which overlaps a lot with the skills used by a competent ambush hunter.

He's good at anything that would fall in the 'wildlife photography' category in a photography competition. Good enough to make a living off it, and that isn't at all easy. Amu never questioned it -- didn't even think about it, and isn't likely to here -- but achieving an upper middle class lifestyle off that skillset (unless he's mooching off Midori, which I vetoed) requires being at Attenborough's level, or at least that of his cameramen.

 

[PistachioCookies]

He's good at anything that would fall in the 'wildlife photography' category in a photography competition. Good enough to make a living off it, and that isn't at all easy.

Click to shrink...

So basically, Miki then.

A.K.A. - A teenage sloth .